Michelle Obama: 'So many women are now breadwinners or co-breadwinners'

4/17/12 4:29 PM EDT

From the pool report of Michelle Obama's speech at a Nashville fundraiser earlier today:

In a nearly 26-minute speech, she also made an appeal to female voters, whom the President and Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, have been courting fervently in recent weeks.

Obama said the President signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act "because he knows that closing that pay gap, that can mean the difference between women losing $50, $100, $500 from every paycheck or having that money in their pockets to buy gas and groceries and school clothes for their kids.

"He did it because when so many women are now breadwinners or co-breadwinners for their families, women's success in this economy is the key to families' success in this economy," she said.

The first lady talked up President Obama's controversial health care reform plan - now under Supreme Court review - by noting that it requires insurers to cover mammograms and prenatal care at no extra cost. She said children with pre-existing conditions like asthma and diabetes must be covered now, and children can stay on their parents' health plans until the age of 26.

"That's what we accomplished," she said.

Michelle Obama, in an interview made public today, echoed her husband's comments that Ann Romney is off limits. But there are ways of driving home the point that a number of Democrats made and said Hilary Rosen was trying to make - that some women don't have the option of staying home with their kids - without actually being explicit.